FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Forward: This story doesn't contain porn. There's sex, but all of it happens offscreen and the most that is described is the consequences. Still, enjoy.

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Shock is the first of the emotions to hit the sliver. How could it all just be gone? The eggs - her children - the men, that one who was trying to take them. Pain from the dart wounds on her chest, soreness from being asleep in an awful posture for however long; all begins to wash away as anger takes root.

Not even anger, but hate. Hate that boils over, hate that makes her lash out against the world. The sliver throws herself against the walls of her cell, crashes into them with an immense smashing noise. Slivers aren't talkative creatures, but hatred is a universal language, its sentences the sounds of violence, its words spoken through swipes of her scythe at the door, beats of her skull into the walls. A guard eventually comes, driven by the terrible sounds. There's not even an order for her to stop; he simply opens up a port hole on the other side of the cell, fires a few darts in. Skistsk's hatred burns, but her body refuses to act, and eventually the beast falls unconscious once more.

A single attempt is not enough for her. When she eventually comes to, she tries once more, wailing on the door and the walls around it until the guards come, force her to stop. Again she wakes up, speaks the tongue of hate, is sedated. Again, again. Eventually, the sliver's assault falters. Underfed from being too focused on lashing out to eat, exhausted from not getting any proper sleep, and sluggishness from having so much tranquilizer put into her recently. Hatred eventually burns up, leaving behind an empty sorrow.

The months flow together, time loses its meaning; without a proper reference for days other than waking up, getting food, sleeping, there's little for Skistsk to base how long it's been. The breeders don't bother having her awake for her sessions anymore, instead opting to simply sedate her, have their beasts do their business, dump her back into her cell, letting her wake up full and even more sore than before. Eggs are laid, and swiftly taken. They don't send people into her room when she's conscious.

The oppressive solitude doesn't last forever; when her children hatch from their eggs, their voices are added to her mind. Quiet at first as they start to get their bearing in the world, growing louder as they age and reach adulthood. Slivers grow quickly; it's not long before her sons are ran through tests to measure their endurance, strength, qualities as mounts and as beasts of war. It's not long before her daughters are put into similar conditions as her, suffering through their own cycles of abuse, loss, hatred, sorrow. Week by week, more are added to the collective, each bearing their own little trait which passes on to the others. Some are much faster, and the slivers around it bear similar speed as they connect; others are able to rend wood and metal with ease, and his brothers grow stronger in his presence.

As the sliver population grows, so too does that of the camp; more buildings are erected, more funding is provided to the project, more effort on seeing just how much the people running this project could get out of it. Plans drift through the collection of voices, notes on when guards are most active, how many of them there are, where each sliver in the facility is, how many slivers they'd need to fight against the humans. Eventually, the cacophony of voices comes to a single collective decision.

<My queen,> A voice within Skistsk's head. She's been paying her children little regard, at most listening in on them to ease her mental loneliness. <We stand ready to free ourselves. We fight on your order.> The sliver rouses herself more fully, bears herself with more pride than she's mustered in a long time. Reaching out, she can feel where her children are, how close some of them are to her. <Free the captives first,> is her first command. <Then, we fight.>

Her children get to work immediately. The quieter, smaller ones slip into holding cells, while larger and stronger ones sit nearby, providing the strength for the infiltrators to do their work. For Skistsk, she feels the muscles in her body tense up as one of her sons closes in, the blade of her scythe feeling lighter, the carapace over her skull hardening. A single swipe rends the door from its frame; a follow-up lunge with her faceplate punches a hole through the frame big enough for her to slide out. Freedom at last. A guard reacts to the noise, as they always do, only this time she's ready for him, able to fight back. With a lunge, putting her armor in front of her, a swipe of her scythe, Skistsk is upon the man. With a panicked scream, shots that go wide or bounce off of her skull, a crunch of armor, skin, bone, the man is no more.

The sliver looks down at her scythe, at the blood dripping from it onto the corpse below. This is her tool to freedom - no. These are their tools for freedom. For her, her children, her children's children. <My children!> She speaks in the minds of all of her brood, the first time many of them have heard her voice. <The time for freedom is now! Break your chains, your collars. Let none but us survive to the dawn!> A quiver through the scores, as countless minds unify on one purpose; as countless bodies move to action.

The sounds of violence spread quickly through the encampment. Of alarms from the humans as they realize that the slivers are fighting, as they get out of their beds to get equipped. Sounds of killing from the slivers, of cutting down man after man. Skistsk slithers through the chaos, allowing her children to revel in it while she picks her own personal targets.

The stables are her first destination. The barn door is little match for her strength, the wood splintering after a couple of impacts. Sadly, the horse keepers aren't here - still, she can hunt. Panicked whinnies erupt from the horses as she enters the stable, as they smell and see a predator come close, growing louder as she begins slicing her way through them. One by one, the beasts of burden fall, be it from being gutted or beheaded by her scythe, or impaled on her faceplate and left to bleed to death. Eventually, some of them manage to break free from their bindings, fleeing through the broken doors and into the waiting arms of her throng. The noises hit a peak, peter off, and eventually all that is left is pained, dying wheezes, the dripping of blood into the pools on the ground, and silence.

Outside, the fighting grows by the minute. By now, the humans have gotten mobilized, and are able to fight back in earnest. Gunfire is added to the sounds of shouting and of hissing, the occasional explosion. Though the humans are outnumbered and overpowered, they still manage to put down some of the uprising, dead slivers joining the humans on the wet dirt. Skistsk concerns herself little with the fighting. Her children have together suffered more than she has, and they should be the ones allowed to enact their vengeance. She focuses, reaching her mind out, touching the humans until she finds one she's looking for. One more target before she can rest for the night.

The door to the barracks breaks down in one practiced slice. Skistsk slithers inside, scanning her head around; the beds are empty, the occupants all gone to die trying to put down the horde outside. The back of the room holds one door, which the sliver cleaves down with a single swing, making her way inside.

Gunshots interrupt her focus, impacts against her faceplate pain and distract her. Bullets land to her side, several hit her skull and crack the carapace but do little lasting damage, a couple hit her flesh and leave bleeding wounds. A mumbled 'shit' from the back of the room as one man aims a pistol at the sliver, fumbles to reload his gun. She's on him before he can put a new magazine in, relieving the man of his offending gun and the hands he was using to fire it in one blow. His screams of pain and panic are interrupted as he's knocked onto his back.

Skistsk perches herself over him, speaking her scythe into the floor next to his head and staring at his face. Yes, this is the one - the man who raped her the first night she was brough here. Whimpered cries of 'no, no, please don't' spring forth as her scythe goes to work; a swipe and an arm comes off. The next removes a leg. Shock takes the man's voice from him, relinquishes him of his pain and to blissful unconsciousness; the sliver doesn't notice, nor care. Another slash, another, a few stabs into his chest. She paints the walls and floor, renders him unrecognizable, crafts a grisly artwork to join the gallery of hatred. At last, she finishes, peeling herself off of the long-dead man to slither outside.

The fighting is finished by now. Some stragglers of the humans still remain, attempting to flee on foot or by vehicle. None who waited until now to escape make it. Skistsk looks over the scene, tries to count how many have fallen. Too many to count for the humans, and more than she wants to consider for her spawn. Still, they won. Their captors are dead, their numbers plenty still, their freedom earned through bloodshed.

The slivers retreat to various buildings, to rest after the night of violence. The corpses will wait until morning to be taken care of. Skistsk herself finds the bedroom of the leader of the facility. He's long dead by now, the casualty of one of her children. His bed is hers. As adrenaline fades, exhaustion takes over, and sleep comes easily, the most restful she's managed to have in longer than she can think about.

Her dreams are blissful. Of her children, of where they live now, of the future and the uncertainty that it holds. Of if they can keep this place, or if they will need to flee to somewhere else to create a new hive.

Until then though, this is her kingdom. Its people are her children. And she is their new queen.